THE ANCIENTS

Stargate and Farscape share some very interesting points in common. Both shows deal with wormholes, technology to create wormholes, and a race called The Ancients that has mastered wormhole knowledge.

In Farscape, John Crichton ends up in a kind of dream-world that is created by an Ancient. This dream is a way of testing how receptive Earth would be if aliens were discovered; John knows deep down that his government would do terrible things to aliens in their custody. When John figures out that he is dreaming, he is released from it and comes face to face with one of the Ancients, a creature that does not look human in any way. This creature tells him that the Ancients are looking for a new home and that they wondered if Earth would be suitable. After John's dream scenario, they realize that they could not co-exist peacefully with humans. Nonetheless, the Ancient does not mean John any harm and implants hidden knowledge about wormholes into John's mind. (Such knowledge would be able to get John back home, something he desperately wants.)

Later on, after John has been twinned, John's twin is psychically called by the Ancients. One of them takes the appearance of John's father and explains that his people have settled into a new home, but they fear that other powerful races will try to use wormhole technology to devistate the galaxy. The Ancient unlocks the information in John's brain and together they work on a weapon that is capable of bringing down a Scarran Dreadnought. The Ancient is killed before completing the weapon.

Eventually, John is told that the Ancients came from another universe. They changed some members of their race so that they could survive in our reality, and gave these special Ancients the mission of monitoring wormhole use. Apparently, the Ancients feared that species from our realm would gain the knowledge of how to invade their universe. Now of days, the Ancients have retreated to a new home and have abandoned their mission.

In Stargate, the Ancients are known to be the lost builders of the Stargate system and masters of wormholes. Although they were like humans in their appearance, they had incredibly advanced technology thousands of years before humans were supposed to have evolved on Earth. They were one of the four major races that entered into an alliance, and at some point they brought human life to other planets in the Milky Way. One group of the Ancients learned how to Ascend, at which point became largely spiritual beings. Most Ancients that did not Ascend were killed by a plague that devistated the Milky Way. One group, however, moved and settled in the Pegasus Galaxy (and put humans on planets in that galaxy, as well). Some came back to Earth 10,000 years ago and left their mark on early Earth cultures.

The Ancients in StarScape

An Ancient The similarities are striking and of great help to those who want to merge the two shows (and the two games). For a StarScape conversion, assume the following:

Name: The Ancients

Appearance: The Ancients on Farscape are not human but they are easily able to create illusions of other forms. On Stargate, most of the races encountered are human or look like humans. I favor the Farscape version because it sets the Ancients apart, in one way - they definitely appear different from the tons of humans out there. On the other hand, they can appear to be human if they want to, which accounts for the Stargate version of things.

Origin: The Ancients came from another universe at some point, and had to alter themselves to survive in our reality.

Status: The Ancients have broken into different groups over time, and those groups have only moved farther and farther apart. One group learned to Ascend, which took them back to their original state. One group went to the Pegasus Galaxy. At one point, long ago, some Ancients ended up in the same galaxy as the Uncharted Territories. They came back in recent years to look for a place to set up a homestead and to keep their knowledge of wormholes safe. After wandering the stars for so long, some of the Ancients do not know how to get back to their original universe and are tired of being constantly on the go.

Technology: The Ancients have very sophisticated technology. They have known how to traverse the stars for thousands of years. They know how to create wormholes in several different ways: with stargates, through a weapon like the one John built, and probably other ways besides. They are also able to create a stargate networks, which links many stargates together and allows travel between the gates. It is fair to assume that the Ancients have the dream-world technology shown in Farscape, in which they can create a mental construct based on information found in the subject's mind. Likewise, it makes sense that the Ancients can implant hidden knowledge into someone's mind if they choose. Keep in mind, however, that there are different groups of Ancients and not all of them may have access to all of these types of technology.

Starscape: Introduction - Races - Feats - Gear - Ships - Misc

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